Articles Posted in Intellectual Property

Apple was hit with a patent infringement lawsuit (read it below) over Siri, the Cupertino, California company’s computer voice search-and-speak technology inside newer iPhones, iPads and iPod Touch devices. The twist in this case, however, is that patent holder Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute isn’t the one suing.

Instead, the plaintiff is Dynamic Advances, LLC, a Tyler, Texas-based company created last year by patent monetizer Erich Spangenberg. The LLC’s members and officers include the Spangenberg Family Foundation and Techdev Holdings.

Spangenberg is known for his sue first, ask questions later approach to patent litigation.

A lawsuit filed Friday in a New York federal court confirms that Dynamic Advances, LLC is a non-practicing entity (NPE) allegedly holding an exclusive license to sue, enforce, and monetize Rennselaer’s patent portfolio:

Dynamic Advances facilitates Rennselaer’s goal of commercializing its patented inventions to the benefit of the general public, and to further Rennselaer’s mission to apply science to the common purposes of life.

Pleadings in the case docket do not currently include a copy of any alleged exclusive patent license agreement between Rennselaer and Dynamic Advances.

The patent at issue is U.S. Patent No. 7,177,798 for a “Natural language interface using constrained intermediate dictionary of results.” The USPTO awarded the patent in 2007.

Evolutionary Intelligence, LLC sued Apple, social media companies Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Yelp, Groupon, and Living Social, telecom Sprint Nextel, and mobile advertising network Millennial Media in federal court yesterday, claiming infringement of 2 patents.

Curiously, the names of the patents are virtually identical, although the abstract and specifics are different.

They are:

1. U.S. patent number 7,010,536, a “System and method for creating and manipulating information containers with dynamic registers,” and
2. U.S. patent number 7,702,682, a “System and Method for Creating and Manipulating Information Containers with Dynamic Registers.”

Except for the defendants’ names and minor changes to the brief summaries of each defendant’s alleged infringement, the lawsuits essentially appear to cut and paste different defendants from one suit to another.

According to Delaware’s Dept. of State, Evolutionary Intelligence, LLC was formed just over four (4) months ago on June 15, 2012. Each complaint states that the plaintiff has a “principal place of business in San Francisco, California.”

For several months, Facebook has reportedly been developing and testing a “Want” button, to supplement its ubiquitous “Like” button. Just last week, Facebook announced that several companies will be testing the new “Want” button and showed what the button would look like.

On October 12, shortly after the release of its new highly anticipated “Want” button, Facebook was sued by a company called CVG-SAB LLC for alleged trademark infringement and other claims over its “Want” marks, including U.S. Trademark No. 4,200,861 and No. 3,923,229, among others. The company, better known by the name under which it does business—Want—operates a social and interactive site that connects people with products they have, like, or desire.

The complaint alleges that “Facebook introduced a WANT Button for services that are effectively the same as, or at least closely related to, Plaintiff’s WANT Button services.” It further argues that Facebook’s use of the button will and has already caused confusion and violates the federal Lanham Act, Michigan’s Consumer Protection Act, and state common law.

Apple, Inc. was hit with a patent infringement lawsuit Thursday (read it below) alleging that the company’s iPad 3 tablets and Macbook Pro computers violate four light emitting diode (LED) patents. The case was filed in in federal court in Delaware by claimed patent holder LED Tech Development LLC, a Delaware limited liability company based in Tyler, Texas, the city that is a patent litigator’s combat zone.

Each of the four infringement claims, the complaint charges, involve Apple “products utilizing pulse-width modulation signals to drive light-emitting diodes.” Apple’s newest iPad a/k/a the ‘iPad 3,’ and Macbook Pro are named specifically.

Apple was sued for copyright infringement on Wednesday by Swiss fashion and beauty photographer Sabine Liewald. Her lawsuit (below) charges the technology company with unauthorized use of her copyrighted “Eye Closeup” photo in an advertising campaign for Macbook Pro computers, related materials, and a keynote speech, without first obtaining legal rights to license it from her New York City agent.

According to the complaint, Apple actually “requested a high-resolution file” of this specific photograph “for ‘comping’ (or layout) purposes only.” After reviewing it, Liewald maintains, the Cupertino-based company told her agent “that it did not intend to use the photograph” in its Macbook Pro ad campaign, but went ahead and did so anyway.

Ameranth, Inc. filed a lawsuit against Apple, Inc. earlier this week in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California alleging that Apple’s new Passbook product infringes on Ameranth’s patented technology.

According to the complaint, Ameranth develops products to generate and synchronize menus and hospitality information across fixed, wireless, and web platforms. It claims to have been nominated by Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, for the 2001 Computerworld Honors Award, which it won. The complaint further alleges that Gates described the company as “one of the leading pioneers of information technology for the betterment of mankind.”

Judging from the complaint, this suit seems unlike a typical “patent troll” suits, in which a small company that owns but often does not itself develop innovations sues a major technology company for infringement of obscure patents. These types of suits are commonly seen as using the patent system to hinder, rather than promote, innovation and creativity. In contrast, Ameranth seems to develop its own technologies and innovations, which could suggest the company’s lawsuit is driven by more than a desire for profit.

Last Tuesday, The Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) upheld a decision to deny Apple’s trademark application to register its music feature mark that’s used on iPhones and other Apple products.  The reason?  The mark was confusingly similar to another mark that’s now owned by MySpace.  Both marks consist of two musical eighth notes on an orange background.  MySpace’s mark was originally issued to iLike, a music service that let users download and share music with each other.  However, MySpace bought iLike in 2009, and closed it down a few years later.

Facebook and Apple have been hit with another patent infringement lawsuit brought by small, relatively obscure research/technology companies. Yesterday, PersonalWeb Technologies and Level 3 Communications filed a suit against both technology companies in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The two plaintiff companies allegedly each own an undivided 50 percent interest in the patents at issue.

In the case against Facebook, the patents at issue are:

• U.S. Patent No. 5,978,791: “Data processing system using substantially unique identifiers to identify data items, whereby identical data items have the same identifiers”

Yesterday, the Regents of the University of California and Eolas Technologies, Inc. filed a lawsuit against Facebook in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The suit alleges that Facebook has infringed on four different patents owned by the Regents and to which Eolas has an exclusive license.

Eolas was founded by Dr. Michael D. Doyle, who, according to the company website, previously served as Director for the Center of Knowledge Management at the University of California – San Francisco. During his tenure there, Dr. Doyle reportedly led a team of researchers to develop technology that led to the 5,838,906 patent (“’906 Patent”) entitled “Distributed hypermedia method for automatically invoking external application providing interaction and display of embedded objects within a hypermedia document.” According to the Eolas Technologies website, the patent “enabled Web browsers for the first time to act as platforms for fully-interactive embedded applications.”

The ’906 Patent has been the subject of prior litigation. In 2007, Eolas and the Regents of the University of California were awarded a $565 judgment against Microsoft. The award was stayed on appeal, and the parties subsequently settled for a confidential amount.

Photographer Christopher Boffoli has filed a lawsuit against Twitter in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, claiming infringement of copyrighted photographs. The complaint alleges that “Twitter users copied numerous photographs from the Disparity Series without license or permission from Boffoli . . . . [and] were hosted either on Twitter or on third-party servers.”

Boffoli claims that Twitter could have removed the copyrighted photos from its own servers or “disable[d] each Tweet advertising or linking to” the photographs on its own or third-party servers.

Twitter’s Copyright Policy states that “We will respond to notices of alleged copyright infringement that comply with applicable law and are properly provided to us.” However, according to Boffoli’s complaint, despite repeated requests that Twitter take down the copyrighted materials, “Twitter has not removed or disabled access to the [copyrighted photos].”